AMD has set up a business arm to develop graphics technologies
that can be licensed to other semiconductor manufacturers across
the handheld industry.
The chip firm said that the move followed a growing demand for
visually compelling content on handheld devices, which requires
rich graphics and 3D hardware acceleration.
The AMD intellectual property licensing initiative brings together
the company's engineering skills, graphics technology and
application developer and publisher support.
"As part of AMD's aim to provide an advanced visual experience
across all devices, new handheld devices developed with AMD
graphics technology inside will contain stunning user interfaces,
immersive 3D games and dynamic multimedia content," a spokeswoman
told vnunet.com.
AMD predicted that the market for handheld devices would reach more
than a billion units worldwide in 2007.
"AMD has been developing graphics technology for PCs and video game
consoles for more than 20 years, and has shipped more than 200
million processors for mobile phones," said Paul Dal Santo, vice
president and general manager of AMD's handheld division.
"This uniquely qualifies AMD to work with OEMs and other
semiconductor suppliers to bring handheld devices to market."
ST Microelectronics has already licensed AMD graphics technology,
including 2D, 3D and vector graphics core engines, as well as
related software compliant with the OpenGL ES 2.0 and OpenVG 1.0
standards.
"Our extensive benchmarking research found that AMD delivers the
highest quality graphics technology for handheld user interfaces
and sophisticated applications such as GPS," said Jyrki
Hannikainen, general manager of ST Microelectronics' application
processor division.